Brian De Palma has attained an unusual position in contemporary Hollywood filmmaking over the last several decades. Straddling generic and critical categories, his work has claimed fervent supporters and detractors. Now often hailed (and marketed) as the 'Modern Master of Suspense', De Palma has roots in the rarefied soil of the NYC avant-garde theater. He began as a "committed" New York-based independent filmmaker whose left-leaning countercultural comedies of the late 1960s and early 70s owed much to the early films of Jean-Luc Godard (e.g., the 1966 political comedy "Masculine-Feminine"). Later dismissed in some quarters as a purveyor of bloody, misogynistic generic sleaze, he graduated to helming a number of big-budget A-list films with such top-drawer stars as Al Pacino, John Travolta, Sean Connery and Robert De Niro. Rarely classified as an actors' director, De Palma has elicited an impressive number of acclaimed performances (e.g., Sissy Spacek in "Carrie", Sean Penn in "Carlito's Way"). Not one to be pinned down, De Palma has continued to confound categories.